Recently I read about a guy who had decided to go 21 days without complaining. He claimed it changed his life. Although I don’t think I complain all that much (B might disagree!), I had been feeling rather grumpy the whole week, so I thought I might give it a shot for 24 hours and see if it made a difference.
I wasn’t really sure what constituted complaining, so I decided that I simply wouldn’t say or do anything that I thought was complaining.
It was an interesting experiment. Here’s what I learned:
1) It was a lot easier not to complain out loud than I’d expected.
2) Even though I wasn’t complaining out loud, I found myself still mentally complaining in my head.
The experiment didn’t change my life. But it did convince me that there’s value to making an effort to stay away from the slippery slope of “Oy vey, my life sucks. Why does this sh*t always happen to me.”
How do you feel about complaining? How do you feel about your spouse complaining? Have you ever tried something like this? Did it make a big difference in your life?
